On Thursday 28 June 2001 15:37, Alan Cox wrote:> > The problem with updatedb is that it pushes all applications to the swap,> > and when you get back in the morning, everything has to be paged back> > from swap just because the (stupid) OS is prepared for yet another> > updatedb run.>> Updatedb is a bit odd in that it mostly sucks in metadata and the buffer to> page cache balancing is a bit suspect IMHO.

For Ext2, most or all of that metadata will be moved into the page cache early in 2.5, and other filesystem will likely follow that lead. That's not to say the buffer/page cache balancing shouldn't get attention, just that this particular problem will die by itself.